"Buhari will certainly not tolerate the impunity and mindless corruption currently going on. Even the northern elite know that and as a result they are unwilling to support him because he will be their nemesis. We need a man who has the courage to look at our elite eye ball to eye ball and ask them to go jump into the lagoon and they will blink because they know that he means business."...Mz. Emma Onyilfor
Ibrahim Sanyi - Sanyi
Olusegun Dada: If General Buhari were president, he would… (Y! Politico)
Posted by Olusegun Dada
by Olusegun Dada
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.)
He cried so we could understand what he saw and wanted to change. We laughed at him. We scoffed at his pain and today we cry? Who is laughing last?
In my lifetime, I have taken certain decisions. One of the biggest and most thoughtful however, was voting the Congress for Progressive Change in the 2011 elections. I remember arguing with most of my friends during his campaign trail on why GMB (General Muhamadu Buhari) being president would have been the best thing to happen to our country's already diminishing state. I made a case for how GMB would have liberated our country from the shackles of corruption and corrupt elements parading themselves at the time as leaders.
Say what you will about the man, he remains, till date, the only individual we tested with the keys to our treasury and our funds didn't disappear into thin air. Like any other world class leader, GMB isn't perfect. He was alleged to have abused human rights while he was military head of state but he was never accused of stealing or overseeing the looting of government funds. He remains till date the only Nigerian head of state who never stole a kobo of government money. He remains the only Nigerian leader till date to have never condoned acts of corruption or corrupt elements while he was in the corridors of power. He proved this beyond reasonable doubt as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Energy, 1976-78, Chairman, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and Head of State and Commander in Chief, Nigerian Armed Forces, 1984-85.
The purpose of this write-up is not to present GMB as a magician or a superhuman who could have waved the magic wand and made all our country's problems go away in two years. But I am certain that under GMB as president, we wouldn't have had;
1. A president who is not remotely in connection with the sufferings of the masses.
2. A president who would have been globe-trotting the world while the citizens of his country are driven out of their homes by flood.
3. N5,000,000,000,000 wouldn't have disappeared under his watch within two years of his administration without a single conviction.
4. GMB wouldn't have boasted on national TV that he didn't give a damn about citizens asking him to declare his assets
5. A terrorist sect that has taken responsibility for murdering thousands of Nigerians wouldn't have held the nation to ransom under GMB
6. N2,100,000,000 wouldn't have put on shoes and disappeared from the Nigerian minting and printing company without people whose sole responsibility was safeguarding these funds answering for it.
7. Fuel subsidy thieves would have been answering seriously for the crimes of stealing from the Nigerian people.
8. GMB as president wouldn't be spending N1,000,000,000 as feeding allowance.
9. He wouldn't be leaving our unborn grandchildren with scores of debts that even their generations can't ever repay.
10. Nigeria won't be in so much mess both locally and internationally as it is today.
11. We wouldn't be spending N2,000,000,000 on a banquet hall we don't need when we have 112,000,000 out of a population of 167,000,000,000 who live on $2 a day.
12. We won't be inside IMF's back pockets right now with our neck deep in debt.
You may wonder if am psychic for pre-empting what Buhari would have done differently if he was Nigerian president today. His antecedents as a leader have brought me to this conclusions. He was a man who during his campaign, advised all criminal elements to flee the country or face prosecution if he became president. He attended every presidential debate to let his voice be heard. He didn't abscond from confrontation and didn't shy away from fielding questions.
Some days to the 2011 elections, GMB wept before a press conference. People claimed it was a political stunt to garner sympathy votes. He was a man who saw tomorrow. He cried so we could understand what he saw and wanted to change. We laughed at him. We scoffed at his pain and today we cry? Who is laughing last? We wail at the spate at which the man we elected as leader (God knows I never voted for him) rape the country dry. Today at least, some of us know better. Buhari was everything, but he was not a thief. He wasn't a man to tolerate thieves either. He is a man who was willing to liberate the nation from the shackles of oppression and criminality. In my humble opinion, he is a living legend.
If he contests in 2015, I will do more than just vote. And that is a promise.
As I see it.
Ibrahim Sanyi - Sanyi
Sunday 6 October 2013 29 Zulhijja 1434
Category: Friday column Published on Friday, 27 September 2013 05:00 Written by Adamu Adamu
Hits: 4969
For the past one year, instead of putting heads together to support the one to whom the people appear ready to give this consent, the entire vocation of a section of the Northern elite has been to look for an alternative - any alternative - to Buhari. But unable to dislodge him from people's hearts, they are in effect engaged only in own asset stripping.
They have accused Buhari of vindictive-ness - slowness at forgiveness and swiftness in punishment, while the reality in the North today is that every plaintiff in the politico-military trial going on is just as guilty as the defendant. One often hears the refrain that 'Buhari has still not forgiven Babangida,' which is not entirely accurate though it has persisted; but it all turns the whole problem into a Buhari-Babangida tango.
And the elite who themselves today oppose - or do not support - Buhari do - or do not do - so largely on account of the fact that his regime had sentenced some of them or their mentors to jail terms of ridiculous lengths. And, for this reason, they haven't forgiven him. Indeed, some political elders show their lack of forgiveness by giving support Jonathan as a way of getting back at Buhari, in spite of what his government has done to the North. So, it is really a case of regional lack of forgiveness, a kind of regional mutually assured deprecation.
But instead of sitting down to solve the contradiction, they are now trying to bring General TY Danjuma into the affair as the new consensus candidate. Perhaps some people are not happy with Danjuma's rising star and they wish to stoke the fires of conflict between him and the mass of Buhari supporters. If they must involve General Danjuma in all this at all, it should not be as a Northern presidential consensus candidate but as the person to chair the meeting where all these contradictions, petty jealousies and personal ambitions masquerading as 'sectionalist patriotism' are resolved. And there are good reasons for this.
First of all, I know General Danjuma will not take it; he has three good reasons which are better heard from him when the offer is formally made to him. Secondly, in addition to those personal reasons, there are the collateral damages that will be suffered. If he were to accept the offer, this might lead to an even bitterer, perhaps unintended, Northern Christian-Muslim split that may never heal. Not that supporters of Buhari don't trust Danjuma - they do; and, as to that, even his enemy does - but they will see his entry into the presidential fray as an attempt by a group, using him as part of an anti-Buhari cabal, to stop their hero; and, in a way, that is what it is. And the religious angle is the simplest sure-fire explanation that most of them will be made to buy. Thirdly, there is Danjuma's distaste for political leadership even back then; and now there is his belief that he is of the old guard -and that the scene should be taken over by the new.
And in Nigeria, where office confers greatness over its occupant, instead of the other way round, some have now put all their stakes on Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, a popular, apparently competent neophyte who, only when he accepts will he realise he has bitten much more than he can chew, and then become a candidate for some kind of heroic failure. Right now, perhaps the concern of the Northern Establishment shouldn't be just to put a Northerner as president; but to put a mature, tried, tested and competent Northerner in the saddle, not for the North to lord it over others, but for it to redeem its reputation; and for Nigeria to begin to get its best and be assured of its destiny.
Those who have in the past called on Buhari to forget his ambition are now called upon to forget their own fears, which are the products of their own private ambitions, and think of the North and Nigeria. They should appropriate and make Buhari's Nigeria Project theirs and proceed to make good any deficiency they see in it. Registering a new party as others have done or as the G-7 governors are thinking of doing will not necessarily mean more democracy in the land: it will just mean more daggers thrust into the body of a fledgling opposition. And the PDP will perhaps be ready to give a billion to anyone who can create for it such a wonderful scenario.
In addition, because of the North's own acts of commission and omission, there has never been any level playing field in Nigeria's elections. There are those in the North who, in the name of Islam, have shut out their women from the electoral process, depriving the North of half of its electoral strength; and even if this purdah were Islamic, the circumstances of the North ought to have warranted its temporary suspension. Then the real value of Buhari's Northern vote is again almost halved by the rigging going on in the South-East and the South-South that routinely returns a voter turnout of between 95% and 108%! The North must find a way of stopping the rigging in the South, or matching it in the North. It is either the entire country does democracy, or the entire country doesn't; because the nation cannot long endure half democrats, half riggers. This is no apologia for Buhari; this is an apology on behalf of Nigeria: it is news to no one and it is a shame to Nigeria.
A consensus candidate in the North will only have feet to stand on if Buhari is not in the field; that is, provided Buhari is not running, any Northern candidate put up will beat Jonathan hands down; and it will not be just because of reverse sectionalism: it will merely be fitting recompense for incompetence, but they haven't yet made the case that he shouldn't. It is not that Buhari is indispensable; it is that there is no good and compelling reason to have to dispense with him.
The reality is that Buhari will always remain the man to beat in at least 15 states of the North. There is no candidate who, in a free and fair election, can hope to garner anything against him but grief. And if only for this fact, they must accept that a winning Northern political consensus without Buhari is impossible if democracy is to have any say in the matter. Whatever they think or say or do about him, the reality is that the mass of the people of this country who are unhampered by sectional, religious or other elite-induced prejudice are solidly with him; most especially in the North where all the propaganda against him, except perhaps the religious, has fallen flat on its face. No one has such a genuine Messianic hold on his supporters. In any other country, Buhari would not only have become president, he would have continued to decide who becomes president after him.
Indeed, if Buhari were not to run out of choice, his supporters would be ready to support anyone he chose as his own replacement; but, right now, it is not his endorsement of another candidate that his supporters are looking for: it is he himself, the embodiment of their political hopes and aspirations, that they want to see in power to give Nigeria a sense of direction, to stop the thievery that is killing the nation and to bring back discipline into private and public life, something he had done before.
And even if Buhari is untested, chances are that he will at least head a government better than President Goodluck Jonathan's. And if the Northern elite can put up with eight years of President Olusegun Obasanjo and five years of Jonathan, specifically, what is it that they cannot tolerate in a Buhari administration? And if it is a fear of having no say in a Buhari presidency, now, what say have they had in Obasanjo's or are they having in Jonathan's? It is time the Northern political elite accept the Buhari project as their own, led though it is by someone whose campaign has failed to woo them sufficiently; because, unless they do so, a monster more horrendous than the one they mistakenly fear will ultimately devour them.
And the die is cast: of all the factors that normally decide the conduct and result of elections in Nigeria—the mismanagement of the economy, the abuse of incumbency powers, identification with political party position, policy orientation as indicated in election promises, religion and ethnicity—it is the personality factor, greatly helped, no doubt, by the clueless incompetence of the Jonathan administration, that seems set to decide the outcome of 2015. And the electorate is already neatly divided between those who want Buhari in for what he can do, and those who want Jonathan out for what he has done—and what he may yet do; and along the sidelines are those who want Jonathan to remain to continue his not doing anything. But what Nigeria desperately needs today is someone who will develop a grand vision for its future, lead it against all obstacles by the sheer force of example and inspire the country to follow him. This is the Buhari promise.
[For the purposes of full disclosure, I must declare that in addition to being a columnist, I am Special Assistant to General Muhammadu Buhari: and I say this only so that I may give readers, who may not know this fact, all the information they need to have to decide on the objectivity of what I have put down here—and, having possession of this fact, determine whether in the circumstance I have kept faith with, or abused, the privileges and powers of column writing.]
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YMR
Sunday 6 October 2013 29 Zulhijja 1434
Category: Friday column Published on Friday, 20 September 2013 05:00 Written by Adamu Adamu adamuadamu@dailytrust.com Hits: 9999
In 2011, the North was like the proverbial Moschus deer that has musk inside it but saunters off into the bush looking for grass.
It was around that time that some of the elite in the North said the region was looking for a Northern consensus candidature to support. An elaborate selection process, which was to do no good to the region's electoral fortunes and which made its eventual defeat undeniable, got underway. But while it was going on, there was already a candidate who is a Northerner drawing overflow multitudes, sometimes in their ecstatic frenzy—from Sokoto to Maiduguri; from Borgu to Yola, and from Kano to Lokoja.
It is now difficult to escape the conclu-sion that they decided to arrive at their consensus candidate only to oppose the consensus already reached by their own people; and probably that might explain why the choice had to be confined to the People's Democratic Party, PDP, as if it was the only party in the country or the only party in which there were Northerners.
Clearly, there was and is an anti-Buhari animus on the Northern political scene, which hasn't diminished in spite of the failure of that consensus arrangement. And with the launching of what appears to be another strident media campaign against Buhari's candidature, it is safe to assume that another consensus arrangement is probably underway.
But, what exactly do they have against Buhari that they have to hide behind untenable arguments to oppose the candidature of the person who is the most popular candidate in the country today? Below are some of their arguments.
Some have accused General Buhari of sectionalism and religious fanaticism, because the Supreme Military Council during his time as head of state was not balanced, as demanded by the nation's constitution, which the soldiers had suspended. Nobody cared to find out whether it was a situation he himself found given; and, more importantly, no one asked the right question, which was: Did his regime display any sectional or religious bias in its policies or actions? While a reflection of sectional or religious federal character is something officially promoted, it must be admitted that in the first place having to reflect federal character is not the best of situations. The ideal ought to have been that impartiality will be shown by all persons as a matter of course.
Others have charged that at 71 Buhari I too old to run for the presidency of this country. If age is going to be a factor in elections, this is perhaps the first time that it will be allowed to do so. When he first ran for the office, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was officially 62 and when he left office at the end of his second term, after failing to arrange an unconstitutional third term, he was 70. But if it was true that his real age was 82 at his first inauguration, that would have made him 90 when he vacated Aso Rock in 2007.
And just last month Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president of Zimbabwe at 89, and while this is a ripe age for a president by any standard, we must not fail to note that even at this age, Mugabe remains the best African leader alive today. To us, popularity with the West is not an admissible index of the acceptability and suitability of leadership or the utility of a presidency.
By the time former U.S. President Ronald Reagan left the White House he was 89. And at least America, if not the world, remembers him not as a failed president hampered by age, but as its most popular president in recent memory. Indeed, age doesn't seem to count that much even in leadership matters of greater moment. A little over six months ago, Jorge Cardinal Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis at the age of 76; and as Pontiff, he is head of state of the Vatican, and is the spiritual guide of the worldwide Catholic community which, if it were a country, would have been more populous than the People's Republic of China.
Some of the reasons given to stop Buhari can be quite ludicrous. For instance, isn't it ridiculous to ask Buhari not to run because he has run too many times, and turn around to say because of this he is desperate for the office? There are many who believe that, in view of the declared winners in past presidential elections, Buhari has always been the better option; and, certainly, it doesn't make any sense to blame the better option for presenting himself: it is rather the electorate that should be chided for choosing the worse one.
That which Buhari seeks is something he has had and held before; and has generally done well in it to great national and nostalgic acclaim. So it is not something that for him will ever be a do-or-die affair, if at, any moment, he had appeared to critics as desperate, it couldn't have been due to any desperation for the office itself; for, he had not in the past used it for personal gain to justify such over the top effort to regain it for the prebendal privileges it confers on those who abuse it.
Perhaps it is clear even to his critics that Buhari will not lose anything by not getting the presidency of this country; but the nation probably stands to lose so much if it fails to get that electrifying effect of a Buhari presidency which Nigeria needs to get it firmly on the way to real and permanent reform.
And there are still those who, because of Nigeria's sad experience of prolonged military rule, frown at soldiers being in politics—and Buhari in particular for being so authentically soldierly. These critics can accept any other, or even no, profession as adequate preparation for jumping into politics—except, paradoxically enough, the military profession whose very essence is training for the leadership and command of men. If politics is the profession for leading society, then the best preparation for it is, no doubt, a military career. They can frown at the military mindset and scoff at its undemocratic command structure, but they can't fault its efficacy as the best practical preparation for leadership for the individual.
As if this is not enough, they have gone on to accuse Buhari of the excesses of military rule; but this can by no means constitute a proper charge against an individual. The rule itself is an aberration, and its inevitable excesses a matter for collective responsibility of the soldiers who struck and the bloody civilians who applauded their putsch. If Buhari should be charged for anything, it should be for any illegalities, if any, that he committed or for the excesses of his regime that were committed due only to any personal proclivities of his.
On the whole, in trying to castigate Buhari for what they believe is a promise he has made not to run for the presidency, which they imagine he is now about to break, his critics actually only succeed in adjusting the halo of probity and integrity even more firmly on his head.
First of all, and thank you very; here is a politician whose every word people believe because they know he always speaks only the truth; and they will have been astonished if he says what he doesn't. So far as we know, no politician in Nigeria has ever been held or raised up to this standard.
Secondly, perhaps what genuine critics ought to have done in the circumstance was to ask whether it was a good decision—and it wasn't—before they try to hold him up to it. This is because if you promise to do a bad thing, there is no moral obligation on you to carry it through; in fact there is the express obligation that you must not do it.
Third, they are saying they can't trust Buhari to be president because he has changed his mind about his candidature; but isn't this an indication of the sincerity of a mind, that it can and will change in the light of facts not available to it at the time of decision or in the face of superior argument? And in this, somehow, critics of Buhari see no contradiction in the fact that they are the ones insisting now that he shouldn't change his mind, when a moment ago they were the ones who were accusing him of inflexibility, saying he can't be president because he doesn't change his mind once it is made up. These twin charges actually answer, discredit and cancel each other.
And in their haste to crucify him, critics of Buhari often forget that leadership is behaviour and attitude, not a post or a position; and it is a question of vision, not of youthfulness; and in a democracy, for it to be legal, it must be based on the people's consent. And this consent if what the new consensus will be fighting.
[Note: For the purposes of full disclosure, I must declare that in addition to being a columnist, I am Special Assistant to General Muhammadu Buhari: and I say this only so that I may give readers, who may not know this fact, all the information they need to have to decide on the objectivity of what I have put down here—and, having possession of this fact, determine whether in the circumstance I have kept faith with, or abused, the privileges and powers of column writing.]
It Is About Nigeria, Not Buhari
By: Muhammadu Buhari on September 6, 2013 - 1:02am
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The registration of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a merger of the main political parties in the country, has generated a great deal of excitement and rekindled the prospect of strengthening democracy and hope in our country, in place of national despair. By this act alone, the leaderships of the merging opposition parties have demonstrated that Nigeria, its future, progress and the prosperity of its citizens are greater than individual ambitions. The APC is therefore a platform for Nigerians to have an alternative to fulfil their aspirations and realise their potential with a party that is strong and nationally based. What is more, it will help to arrest the drift towards oppression and anarchy.
Democracy is not just about free and fair elections, the consequence of which parties alternate to form governments. It also provides opportunities for fresh policies to move the country forward. That is why presidential systems have term limits, such as we have but the failed third term attempt is a clear indication that, given the opportunity, some politicians will try and subvert the system.
In parliamentary Systems, where there are no term limits, members of the governing parties remove the head of government,however successful she or he is in government and popular with the voters. That was the fate of two British prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, in recent times. Alternatively, provided there are free and fair elections, the electorate will vote out unpopular governments such as what happened with Mrs Ghandi in India.
The dangers of one party or an individual remaining in power for too long are two-fold: first is corruption of power. Power, it has been said, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The second element is the temptation to absolutism: the rule of one party has the tendency to become the rule of a faction of the party and ultimately the rule of one person, a forbidden path to a Stalinist state.
Regrettably, after the euphoria of APC's registration, public discussion has been more about personalities and less on the benefits of the emergence of a strong alternative to the governing party and the prospect it offers to widening democracy and stemming the drift to impunity, where an elected president can say he doesn't give a damn about public opinion.
The issue is not just about Buhari, but something greater than Buhari or any individual or parts of its whole; it is about Nigeria - its future, progress and prosperity of its citizens, living in peace, harmony, its evolution and integration.
By joining the army, I had signed up to lay down my life for my country. This was what my colleagues and I faced during our tragic civil war to keep our country united. Nigeria has been good to me. I was an orphan but it educated me and trained me and offered me the ultimate prize any citizen can hope for: its leadership.
My involvement in the political process is another call to duty and my desire to give back to Nigeria a little of what it gave me, by joining hands with others to provide viable options to our fellow citizens and evolve social and economic policies that are sustainable and all-inclusive, by a caring leadership that is dedicated to the efficient management of the economy, social justice and individual liberty.
Such leadership is not restricted to government alone, we all have roles to play: the National Assembly, the judiciary, the security services,the press and civil society groups, to ensure checks and balances, protection of all under the law, and accountability.
If some politicians find it more convenient to drag public discussion towards the weaknesses of Nigeria, in order to hide their incompetence and divert attention from their theft of public funds, it is the responsibility of the press to steer the debate to policies and programmes, not withstanding the diversionary self-destruct antics of the PDP.
Buhari, former head of state, is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress.
- See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/060913/it-about-nigeria-not-buhari#sthash.KRsP3I5O.WOXBVoAW.dpuf
July 8, 2013 - 00:35 — siteadmin
Professor Pius Adesanmi was rather magnanimous in pointing out the achievements of Bola Tinubu as governor of Lagos state and those of Muhammadu Buhari, former head of state. His problem, however, seems to be that the supporters of these two political heavy weights come across as insulting, especially to Pius. So he wants to tell those apologists why and where their principals are wanting. In the process he managed to throw in some insults of his own!
The achievements of these two men are no mean feat. And Pius listed those, but then turned around to belittle them.
Then he gave an order to Buhari's handlers to begin to mould him in his (Adesanmi's) own image, or else... Haba!
The achievements of these two men and their supporters should be rightly celebrated because I think it's largely thanks to people like them that we can today meaningfully talk of a viable opposition to the rot that is PDP, otherwise we'll be talking of one party state today. These two guys could easily have joined the PDP and thereby join in the amala politics of the party, but thankfully they chose not to. Are they perfect? Certainly not, and that is why they should be criticized. But productive criticisms are usually constructive. For instance, before repeating the PDP allegation that Tinubu imposed his daughter on the traders as their leader, it might be good to hear from the other side. I don't think anybody, including Tinubu, can easily impose leaders on traders without them fighting back, especially now he's not the governor. You may be inadvertently ascribing to the man more powers than he actually wields. My own criticism of Tinubu is born out of his utterances, especially during the 2011 elections; which is why I for one don't really believe that Tinubu's latest romance with Buhari is genuine. I would, of course, love to be proved wrong. I have also criticized Buhari, again based on his utterances in the run up to the 2007 elections.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, the point is not that "Buhari is the only living Nigerian capable of this and that," as Pius alleges, but rather the issue is this: among those who stand a REAL chance of becoming president 2015, who among them has the pedigree of Buhari? We asked this question before Jonathan was selected. Now that question stares us tauntingly in the face again! Sure, there are millions of Nigerians who can do better than Buhari in many ways, including yours sincerely, including Pius himself. But the real question is how many of us stand a real chance of winning in an election? It's not too much to expect Pius to understand this.
To claim that some of Buhari supporters are fundamentalists because they put up a robust defence of the General is rubbish! I'm a die-hard supporter of Buhari and I don't consider myself in any way, shape or form, remotely fundamentalist! Pius you're wittingly or unwittingly insulting the intelligence of Nigerians who genuinely support the candidacy of Buhari based on his personal integrity which even you grudgingly acknowledge! Pius forgot to mention those who insult Buhari supporters with unprintable venoms, or doesn't that count as insult? The truth is that with the advent of social media, every Musa and Tunde, every Obi and Tamuno can post their venoms online to poison the public space. These people have no inkling what a mature discussion is all about. They cut across the political and ethnic divides. To confine them to 'fundamentalist' supporters of Buhari is a sloppy characterization which unfortunately is aimed at demonizing the General even if only by proxy.
Pius then moves to his highfalutin advice to Buhari and his teeming supporters. Funny that a man is being maligned for what he didn't do, for not fulfilling assignments people like Pius expect him to fulfill if he wants to be their president.
I know one thing for sure: whatever Buhari says is bound to be taken out of context, twisted to fit the narrative his detractors have woven for over a decade now, whether it was said in Damaturu, in Otuocha or Otuoke; whether it was said in AIT, BBC, or NTA. Buhari is neither a lecturer nor an orator. There is no doubt that he gets many, many invitations. But unlike the thieving elites, Buhari doesn't have a private jet and his income is limited to his pension, believe it or not. I reckon his wealthy well wishers foot his travel expenses. Despite that, if Buhari is all over the place as some people are suggesting, his detractors will say that he is desperate to become president, bla bla bla. If a man whose cook and driver—in whose hands his live literally rests—are Christians, whose daughter is reportedly married to an Igbo, whose running mates have always been southern Christians, have not escaped the charge of being a Muslim fanatic and northern irredentist, what good will travelling all over the south do for those who have already made up their minds about him eons ago? I mean, if people continue to call him a Muslim fanatic even after he chose a Christian pastor as running mate, don't you think it's a hopeless case trying to convince them? For your information, Pius, again sorry if I sound pedantic, more than any major politician in Nigerian, Buhari's genuine support cuts right across the country: there are Ibibios, Igbos, Yorubas, Kanuris, Biroms, Ijaws, Ikweres, Ogonis, Tivs, Idomas, etc, etc, who will stake their very lives for the sake of Buhari because they know he's an honest man! The point is that for the thieving elites, Buhari is a marked man.
Recently a poster so badly construed that it's evidently clear to any discerning mind that it's the work of detractors, was all over Abuja calling Buhari the messiah Nigerians have been expecting, bla bla bla... Of course Buhari wasted no time in denouncing that hatchet job. Expect such shenanigans to continue as long as Buhari shows interest in ruling the country again. No one in our political scene elicits the kind of passion Buhari does. And this says volumes.
Pius claims that Buhari "releases northern and Islamic irredentist statements to the rest of the country in interviews granted the Hausa service of BBC and VOA, going as far as to carelessly equate a legitimate clamp down on Boko Haram with a war against the North…" That Pius sees the killing spree currently going in the north as "legitimate clamp down on Boko Haram" beggars belief. One would have hoped that his understanding of Buhari's statement were better than that of the average 'Nigerian' understanding. As one wit said, not going beyond the average is what keeps the average low.
All politics is local. Tinubu for instance couldn't have achieved what he achieved without a solid political base. If in doubt, ask Pat Utomi. So if Buhari comes out against the killings in the north in the name of 'fighting' Boko Haram, we should understand it as such. Whole villages have been razed and thousands of innocent people, including women and children, killed by the government troops. Buhari should be foolish not to speak out against that because he wants to be president. He has consistently condemned Boko Haram—never mind that such condemnations don't make good press because they don't fit the narrative. So speaking out against the atrocities of government troops should not honestly be construed as supporting the insurgents no matter how it is twisted. Nor should he be misunderstood when he pointed out that those Niger Delta criminals who call themselves liberation fighters are just that: criminals.
What is good for one should be good for the other. But now it's very lucrative to be a militant in the Niger Delta. Apart from being in government, it's the next quickest way to become a multi-billionaire! Recently they publicly claimed responsibility for slaughtering nine police officers and kept custody of their corpses for sometime; they claimed responsibility for bombing Abuja on Independence Day, and have been promising to continue to make the country ungovernable. Both Boko Haram and the Niger Delta militants are enemies of the state who strive to make the country ungovernable and should be treated as such, no double standards please. Recently President Jonathan stated the obvious fact which is that there are more Muslim victims of Boko Haram than Christian victims. If Buhari made that statement, it should have been put down as one of the reasons why he should never be president of Nigeria!
Discerning minds know that there's no real clampdown on Boko Haram as such. Jonathan has never been serious about rooting out the criminals. In fact he IS thoroughly confused about the simplest task of a commander in chief, so the Boko Haram menace simply overwhelms him.
By now we should at least have had some of the real sponsors of Boko Haram arrested and prosecuted. Instead what we've had so far is at best a haphazard approach to the menace and at worse a killing spree in the name of rooting out the insurgents. It is not because Buhari said it. Indeed, the American secretary of state recently warned Nigerian authorities about the human rights abuses connected with the fight against the insurgents. As reported by the New York Times of 17 May 2013: "Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States was 'deeply concerned about the fighting in northeastern Nigeria following President Jonathan's declaration of a state of emergency,' and that we are also deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism." In the New York Times of 25 May 2013, Kerry was again reported as saying, when asked about the situation in northern Nigeria: "One person's atrocity does not excuse another's, Mr. Kerry said, when asked about reports of serious human rights violations by Nigerian forces." Buhari has not said anything different. He was simply calling it as he saw it. But because he's Buhari, Pius feels free to characterize his statements as "northern and Islamic irredentist statements"! It's really sad that many Nigerians think ONLY through the prism of religion and ethnicity!
Many innocent civilians, especially women and children have been killed in the name of fighting the insurgents, tens of thousands of Nigerians have become refugees, whole towns and villages—think of Baga and Bama—have been razed to the ground in the name of fighting Boko Haram, despite all that, the insurgents have remained strong. The Jonathan government simply doesn't know what to do with the Boko Haram menace except to try to make political capital out of it. So far what we have is a mishmash of incoherent and poorly thought out approaches. They're simultaneously fighting them and offering them amnesty and also proscribing them!
Concerning the age of Buhari, Pius seems to be in this absurd reasoning that young age a good president makes. This is just a manifestation of an abject ignorance of history. It could be even worse: a band wagon effect. America, Britain, France, Canada, Kenya, Benin, Senegal, Ghana, etc, etc, have young presidents, so Nigeria must step forward and say 'me too.' "Imitation is suicide" says Ralph Waldo Emerson in his classic essay "Self Reliance." The man, John XXIII, soon to be made a saint, who revolutionized the Catholic Church via Vatican II was 77 years old when he was elected pope.
Incumbent Pope Francis is 76, and is ably leading more than 1.2 billion Catholics before our very eyes. Winston Churchill was 77 years old when he was elected prime minister of Britain after failing countless times. Today there are basically only two former Prime Ministers of Britain: Churchill and the others. General de Gaulle was 70 years old when he became the president of France; there are many more examples. There are also people who became leaders at a relatively young age and did well. Doing well or not doing well has nothing to do with age as such unless one is ignorant of history. Awolowo became premier of the western region at the age of 45 and did very well. But no one would doubt that he would have performed any less had he won the presidential elections of 1979 or 1983 when he was already in his 70s.
Buhari became president at the age of 41 and did very well. And just like Awo, no one doubts that he'll do at least as well in his 70s. The relationship between performance and age in most human endeavours cannot be straitjacketed as Pius seems to be claiming here.
Pius once proposed to us that bishop Kukah should run for president. This was a man who ran back from overseas to run Obasanjo's farcical 'Constitutional Conference' whose mandate was ostensibly to rewrite the Constitution in order to allow the Owu chief to transform himself into an emperor. In such a post Kukah couldn't but speak from both sides of his mouth. And it seems he remains ever close to the parasitic ruling establishment.
For Pius it's hard to know where insult stops and real debate begins. If you come telling people that Buhari is an irredentist, you've killed debate right there and you shouldn't be surprised if your interlocutor responds in kind. You're pontificating for Buhari what he should do if he wants to win the presidency as if you just arrived from planet mars! Need one remind you that since 1999 the presidency has never been won: the thieving elites have always chosen who to give the presidency to, for obvious reasons. Buhari's most insidious opponents are from the northern oligarchic establishment. Is it too much to expect Pius to know that?
In the spirit of your article, and expecting that Sahara reporters publishes this, I take it you mean we should criticize everything and everyone. So my question is, what exactly are you trying to say? Are you saying that Buhari is a northern irredentist and a Boko Haram apologist and an old man and therefore shouldn't run for president? But, if he's really thinking of running, then he better start running all over the country giving speeches and begging people to stop seeing him as an old religious fanatic who's pushing a northern agenda? If that is your point, then it should have been better if you didn't interrupt your self-imposed break. To pay you back in your own coin: your article is an insult on the intelligence of any above average Nigerian who knows what our real political problems are.
uchennaosigwe@gmail.com
As I see it.
Ibrahim Sanyi-Sanyi
http://projectgmb2015.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1
THE ORCHESTRATED DISTORTION OF RECENT COMMENTARIES OF GENERAL MUHAMMADU BUHARI (GMB).
Our attention has been drawn to the recent call by Pastor Ayodele Oritsejafor, President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN ), for the arrest of General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) – the national leader of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) – on account of his recent commentaries on national issues. We are aware that this is a rehash of the stance of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor to a previous piece of mendacious writing by Dr Reuben Abati in his Guardian Newspaper column, wherein he alluded to GMB as being responsible for post-election violence in some parts of the North in April, 2011.
The subsequent libel suit instituted by GMB revealed that Abati had no shred of evidence for his reckless surmising. Meanwhile, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor had used the platform of CAN to impetuously seek the arrest of GMB based on fiction and orchestrated literary violence by the PDP-led Federal Government. The subsequent appointment of Dr. Reuben Abati as the Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on media and Publicity revealed the fitting reward for that hatchet job. We have also noted the physical presence of President Good-luck Jonathan at the ceremony where Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor was presented a gift of Bombardier Jet on 10th November, 2012.
The kernel of the latest orchestrated distortion of GMB's recent commentaries was done to blacken him as supporting the insurgency of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In fact, Pastor Oritsejafor impudently asserted:
"He is, therefore, the prime leader of this religious and blood thirsty sect called Boko Haram, a movement that is based on a warped interpretation of a strict adherence to force people of other religions into Islam. This kind of fundamentalism is the driving force behind his failure of each election in the country."
It is our view that this statement is utterly tendentious and unsupportable by incontrovertible facts. We are aware that, as it was before and after the 2011 elections, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor is keen on helping the electoral fortunes of his friend, President Good-luck Jonathan. We are therefore compelled to re-tell GMB's uncompromising stand on Boko Haram.
In a recent interview in June 2012, this is what GMB said on Boko Haram:
"When we knew who was Maitatsine, wasn't he arrested, killed and his corpse shown to everybody? But this Boko Haram, if you could recall somebody recommended me to represent Boko Haram. I told them the honest truth that I didn't know who their leadership was and I still don't know who their leaders are. I don't know their philosophy because no religion advocates hurting the innocent. So, all those people giving it a religious meaning are wrong. You can't kill a person and say Allahu Akbar (God is great). It is either you don't know what you are saying or you don't believe in it. It is one of the two."
On 25th December, 2012 (Christmas day), bombings took place at the St. Theresa's Catholic Church, Madalla, Niger State; Jos, Plateau State; and Damaturu, Yobe State. This is what GMB said:
"Bombing other human beings to death at any time is callous. It becomes much more reprehensible on a Christmas day and all lovers of peace must condemn these gruesome acts and demand that the perpetrators be fished out and brought to book."
The amiable General and our National leader continued:
"How on earth would the Vatican and the British authorities speak before the Nigerian government on attacks within Nigeria that have led to the deaths of our citizens? This is clearly a failure of leadership at a time the government needs to assure the people of the capacity to guarantee the safety of lives and property. You can devote the entire budget to security and there won't be any result if there is no competence in leadership to know what to do at the right time."
We leave discerning Nigerians to judge and see the anomaly in Pastor Oritsejafor's reckless call and GMB's unwavering patriotic stand on Nigeria's insecurity. Again, Pastor Oritsejafor has proven to be, a willing implement for destabilization in the hands of the Presidency, in the orchestrated heckling of GMB ahead of the 2015 elections.
As we shall prove shortly, the moral rectitude, personal discipline and patriotic love for Nigeria by GMB is head and shoulder above what the current leaders of the Nation possess. GMB is not in the mould of leaders that do not match their words with deeds. In the run to the 2011 election, Dr. Good-luck Jonathan told an unsuspecting Nation: "My ambition is not worth the blood of anybody." But truly, his electioneering campaign was trailed by blood, tears and woes! As a ruling President, Dr Good-luck Jonathan has caused more destabilization of the polity through his capricious politics than any of his predecessors in office. Under his watch, the Nation state is tottering and statecraft in peril, but he prefers to use negative propaganda against those he perceives as interested in contesting for the Nation's presidency, to actually evincing enviable leadership of the country.
There are certain incongruities in the Nation state under President Jonathan that GMB has continued to sensitize Nigerians about, and for which the government has continued to distort with its divisive weapon of preying on the ethno-religious fault lines in the Country.
In 2009, Mohammed Yussuff, the leader of Boko Haram, was arrested by the military and handed over to the Nigeria Police. He was paraded with hand-cuff before Journalists. Barely twenty four hours' later, Yussuff's lifeless body was shown to Journalists and still in hand-cuff! In a related development, persons suspected to be Boko Haram members or sympathizers were shot by the Police at point-blank range. The video footage of the incident posted by al-Jazeera showed some of the people on crutches and made to lay face-down before a police man bent over and summarily executed them all.
This act of cruel injustice, coupled with the official acquiescence of the PDP-led Federal Government of President Good-luck Jonathan was what GMB said to be the genesis of the bloody insurgency of Boko haram.
· In Baga, a fishing community in Borno State, a Nigerian Soldier was killed. The ensuing reprisal attack by the Military left in excess of 185 persons dead – mostly children and women – and many houses destroyed.
· The previous prosecution of the war on terror in northern Nigeria had been done with such unprofessional ferocity that left tales of human rights abuses and extra-judicial murders. The United States of America (USA) had pilloried the Nigerian military for this. It is on this background that GMB expressed his skepticism about the current declaration of state of emergency in three northern states. With the communication black-out over these states, are we not to expect more abuses in the name of enforcing security?
· In May, 2013, about 60 security men (consisting of police and State security operatives) were allegedly gruesomely murdered in Nasarawa by the Ombatse cult group. In a bizarre twist of the events, the Director-General of Directorate of State Security (DSS), Mr. Ita Ekpeyong, said he had forgiven the killers of the service men and left them to God's judgment. GMB, in his characteristic candour, lambasted the head of Nigeria's spy agency for this perfidious statement. These are his exact words: "However, the Nasarawa attack is a cult that infiltrated the police itself. The latest I learnt from you the press is that the number of security personnel killed is 56. The cult group slaughtered 56 security men. The SSS boss or whoever that said he has left everything to God has no right to do that.
Constitutionally, Nigerians can practice any religion they want or they can be atheists or anything they want to be, that is constitutional. But nobody should hurt a citizen of Nigeria and then get away with it, not to talk of slaughtering 56 law enforcement agents and then somebody coming out from the system to say such a thing. It is either that person doesn't know what he was talking about or he shouldn't even be there."
In many jurisdictions, notably the advanced democracies, any murderous violence on the service men is viewed with uncompromising severity. In the same vein, there is also a concomitant punishment of the service men for any breach of service codes or rules of engagement.
Last March, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a veteran of four US combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, ran amok and killed sixteen persons in Kandahar province of Afghanistan, while also burning their houses and villages. The United States (US) authority did not go the way of Nigeria. The offending service man was arraigned before the Court by military prosecutors. From latest developments on the case, Bales stands the risk of life imprisonment or death sentence. We have stated this example to show the utter irresponsibility and ineptitude currently pervading the business of governance in the Nigerian state. The Federal Government, under President Good-luck Jonathan, had shown complicity in the exacerbation of security concerns in Nigeria.
As a Party, we know that the Federal Government of President Good-Luck Jonathan, like the previous PDP administration, seems too intimidated by GMB's sterling qualities and previous meritorious service to Nigeria that no effort is spared to depreciate his status through deliberate distortions and misrepresentation of his statements. We sincerely sympathize with them! For the avoidance of doubt and within the ambit of space/time constraints, we hereby avail discerning Nigerians some aspects of the stellar public service performance of General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB):
In August 1975, as a Lt. Colonel, GMB was appointed military governor of North-Eastern State, an area now comprising the six states of the North East geo-political zone. He governed with such acuity and urbanity that was undoubtedly the basis for the future development of the area.
As Federal Commissioner for Petroleum resources (March 1976-July 1978), two of the Nation's four refineries, that is, warri and Kaduna, were built. Also, thousands of kms of pipelines and fuel depots were constructed.
In 1983, the patriotic fervor of GMB was rudely put to test when the Chadians, in a mindless expansionist adventure, invaded and occupied 19 Islands in Lake Chad within Nigerian territory. As the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the 3rd Armored corps, GMB successfully carried out a blockade, forcing the return of the territories -and thereafter pursued the Chadians as far as 50kms into Chadian territory; a feat loudly applauded as forward defense strategy at its best!
As the incoming Head of State on December 31st, 1983, he aroused the Nigerian people into a new wave of Patriotism with his often-quoted statement: "This generation of Nigerians, and indeed future generations, have no country other than Nigeria. We shall remain and salvage it together." This aptly captured what later defined the conduct of the Buhari administration. The 20-month era of strong leadership espoused what later became known as 'Buharinomics', which simply put, is an admixture of frugality, probity, respect for contractual agreements, expunction of all covert or overt attempts at subjugating the Nigerian economy to world powers and above all, the economic policy with Nigeria as the center-piece.
It is therefore without any whiff of equivocation to state that the boldest attempt, in the last thirty years, at alleviating the pains of the teeming masses was during the enactment of Buharinomics. It was not surprising that inflation rate inherited from the ruinous and immediate past civilian regime was lowered by more than 18 points, from 23.2% in 1983 to 5.5% in 1985! The Buhari regime rebuffed all entreaties by IMF and World Bank to devalue the naira, remove subsidies on services and increase pump price on fuel; not even a special envoy from President Ronald Reagan was sufficient to make him rescind his decision!
As Executive Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), hundreds of kms of roads were constructed to hitherto unreached rural communities. He ensured the supply of drugs to the health centres of Educational institutions. The infrastructural development of the Country was massive with his inimitable management of the funds released for PTF operations. It is no wonder that the subsequent scrutiny of the financial dealings of the PTF showed an excellent work done by the agency.
It is against this back-drop that we understand the frustrations of the current leaders and their sympathizers in the heckling expeditions of GMB. As things stand, he poses the greatest challenge to the continued existence of the indignity and incongruity that the Jonathan administration represents. The tottering edifice of the weather-beaten umbrella of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) is aptly captured by the well-reasoned words of Othman Dan Fodio: "a kingdom can endure with unbelief but it cannot endure with injustice".
As GMB once posited, "the battle for social justice is not just for me, or the opposition, but a challenge to all Nigerians. Each and everyone of us has a duty to stand up and speak for justice. The first principle of justice in a democracy is the right of the citizens to freely choose their leaders. This can only happen if elections are free and fair, not according to INEC or a bare majority of the Supreme Court. They must be free and fair by all counts and in all senses."
In the run to the April 2011 elections, GMB saw through the entire gamut of deception of the Jonathan regime and wept. Many jeered, some excoriated him but the discerning ones were also inconsolable. Unfortunately, his tears are drying up but the teeming Nigerian people are now made to weep. Every act of the Jonathan regime is a scripted venture in ruinous adventure. There is confusion in the engine room and the statecraft is on auto-pilot. We are sure that though the situation is sordid, help is on the way! The merger of the opposition parties shall provide the fulcrum for springing the Nigerian nation back to life.
Indeed, to wrestle Nigeria from the vice-grip of the current unpatriotic leaders is a task that must be done. Eternal vigilance is still the price for our liberty.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC
As I see it.
Ibrahim Sanyi-Sanyi sent this mail from his BlackBerry wireless device
http://projectgmb2015.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1
